Appropinquante Concilio is the motu proprio of John XXIII establishing the procedural norms, structures, personnel, and voting mechanisms for the upcoming Second Vatican Council: it solemnly anticipates a “marvelous spectacle” of bishops from all nations, defines who are “Conciliar Fathers,” erects commissions, a technical and ecumenical secretariat, an administrative tribunal, sets Latin as the official language, codifies secrecy, and details how schemas are to be proposed, debated, amended, and finally approved for promulgation by the “pope.” Behind its juridical precision, this document is the cold, technocratic blueprint for institutionalized apostasy, architecting the conciliar revolution that would mutilate doctrine, worship, and discipline under a pseudo-Catholic facade.
The Programmed Subversion: How Appropinquante Concilio Prepares the Conciliar Revolution
Exalting the Spectacle, Concealing the Apostasy
Already in the opening paragraphs, the text reveals its spirit.
John XXIII greets the approaching council as a prorsus admirandum spectaculum, rejoicing in the “marvelous spectacle” of a vast crowd of bishops converging on Rome. The accent falls not on the *tremendum iudicium Dei* (terrible judgment of God), not on the defense of the integral deposit of faith, not on the condemnation of rampant errors of the age, but on the visual and emotional impression of a global assembly.
He speaks of:
“the Catholic Church, which, being the most holy spouse of Jesus Christ and the mother and teacher of all nations, greatly desires to bring the light of truth to all her children, including those who live outside her fold, and to inflame them more and more with the ardor of charity.”
This phrasing, while borrowing traditional titles, carefully introduces a key conciliar trope:
– “Children who live outside her fold” are spoken of in a sentimental, inclusive register, without the traditional clarity that those outside the Church are subject to darkness and danger, that there is no salvation outside the Church properly so called (*extra Ecclesiam nulla salus*), and that their first need is conversion to the one true Church, not a vague “ardor of charity.”
– There is no mention of their obligation to submit to the Roman Pontiff, confess the Catholic faith, and abandon false religions (cf. Council of Florence, Decree for the Jacobites; Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, 15–18, 21).
The text then cites the Great Commission:
“Euntes … docete omnes gentes, baptizantes eos … docentes eos servare omnia quaecumque mandavi vobis.”
But immediately evacuates its force by framing the council not as a defensive bastion against modern errors, nor as an organ of solemn condemnation, but as an “aggiornamento” machine: a procedural engine for adapting the Church to modern humanity. The mandate “teach… baptize… observe ALL” (Matt. 28:19–20) is invoked, but the motu proprio never speaks of:
– condemnation of heresies,
– necessity of the true faith for salvation,
– the Social Kingship of Christ over states,
– the mortal peril of indifferentism, liberalism, naturalism, Masonry.
This silence is not accidental; it is the programmatic omission that defines the entire conciliar coup.
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, such a foundational text, on the eve of a putatively ecumenical council in an age drenched in apostasy, that omits explicit reaffirmation of truths solemnly defended by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII, already signals rupture. Where Quas Primas proclaims that peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ the King and condemns laicism as a “plague,” Appropinquante Concilio proposes a council carefully structured to avoid such condemnations and to embrace a naturalistic “dialogue” with the modern world.
Technocratic Engineering of a Docile “Council”
The body of the text is a detailed legal-technical ordinance: who participates, how they vote, commissions, tribunals, secretariats, experts, observers, ceremonial, secrecy, languages. On the surface, it resembles earlier conciliar regulations; in substance, it encodes a controlled, top-down, manipulable apparatus suited to produce pre-planned outcomes.
Key elements:
– Art. 1–7 define that the “Council” consists of bishops “with the Supreme Pontiff,” plus others called by him, all denominated “Fathers.” This presupposes John XXIII as true pope. From the standpoint of pre-1958 doctrine, a public destroyer of received doctrine and discipline cannot be the rule of faith; as Catholic theologians (e.g., Bellarmine) synthesize, a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church. The entire juridical edifice rests upon an illegitimate foundation.
– Art. 5–7 erect a network of commissions:
– doctrine of faith and morals,
– bishops and diocesan governance,
– Eastern churches,
– sacraments,
– clergy and laity discipline,
– religious,
– missions,
– liturgy,
– seminaries, studies, and “Catholic education,”
– “apostolate of the faithful, printed writings, and spectacles.”
The conciliar sect’s future dismantling of dogma, liturgy, discipline, and education is structurally anticipated: everything is put “on the table,” subjected to novel commissions dominated and filtered from above.
– Art. 7 §2 introduces:
– a “Secretariat for extraordinary questions,”
– a “Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity,”
– a Technical Commission,
– an Economic Secretariat.
The “Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity” is the institutional Trojan horse of false ecumenism. It embeds, inside the council’s procedural heart, a permanent organ devoted not to conversion of heretics and schismatics, but to “unity” in the sense of dialogue and mutual recognition—precisely what Pius IX, Leo XIII, and St. Pius X condemned as indifferentism and modernist relativism (cf. Syllabus of Errors 15–18; Lamentabili; Pascendi).
No pre-1958 Catholic magisterium ever envisioned a conciliar structure with an official ecumenical secretariat designed to negotiate with heretical communities as if they were partners, not subjects to be recalled to the one fold.
The Linguistic Mask: Pious Latin Covering Revolutionary Intent
The document’s Latin is sober, canonical, apparently traditional. But its rhetoric exposes an underlying mentality:
1. Repeated praise of the “amplissimus Consessus” and “spectaculum”:
– Catholic councils are not pageants. Trent and Vatican I spoke with grave consciousness of their duty to condemn errors, clarify dogma, restore discipline. Here, the focus on spectacle betrays an ecclesiology of image management, a proto-media age self-awareness foreign to the Fathers.
2. Emphasis on “nova doctrinarum artiumque incrementa”:
– The text warmly notes modern advances as reflections of divine Wisdom and hopes they spur moral growth. True in the abstract, but scandalously partial in 1962, when those “advances” are bound up with atheistic materialism, Communism, Freemasonry, moral dissolution. There is no word of warning, no echo of St. Pius X’s clear denunciation of modernist philosophy, no mention of the condemnations of socialism, communism, liberalism. This is deliberate anesthesia.
3. Idealized unanimity:
– It presumes all “Fathers” moved by the same Spirit, “lux mundi,” producing fruit “in omni bonitate et iustitia et veritate.” This pious fiction denies the reality that many participants were already imbued with condemned modernist principles. By granting automatic spiritual legitimacy to everyone summoned by the usurper, the text denies the traditional requirement that defenders of the faith must separate truth from error, orthodoxy from heresy, shepherd from wolf.
Linguistically, we see a fusion of:
– traditional forms (Latin; references to Christ, Mary, Joseph),
– with modernist omissions and euphemisms:
– no “anathema sit,”
– no “error,”
– no “condemn,”
– no “Masonic,” “liberal,” “modernist,”
– only soft aspirations: “fructus uberrimi,” “caritas,” “unitas,” “pax.”
This stylistic anesthesia prefigures the conciliar sect’s preferred language: pastoral, vague, irenic, allergic to precision where precision would condemn its own program.
Theological Evisceration: A Council Without the Sword of Truth
Measured by unchanging Catholic doctrine pre-1958, the motu proprio constructs a council stripped of the essential functions historically exercised by ecumenical councils.
1. No mandate to condemn errors.
– The text never states that the council’s task is to anathematize heresies or to defend defined dogmas against contemporary attacks.
– Contrast with Trent’s and Vatican I’s canons, each truth defended by a precise “si quis dixerit… anathema sit.”
– St. Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi orders the unmasking and expulsion of modernists; here, modernists will be seated as “Fathers” and “periti conciliares.”
2. No clarity about the Social Kingship of Christ.
– Pius XI in Quas Primas teaches that the rejection of the kingship of Christ over states is the root of modern chaos and condemns laicism as a crime.
– Appropinquante Concilio is utterly silent on this, while designing a council that will later produce Dignitatis Humanae’s cult of religious liberty and Gaudium et Spes’s humanistic exaltation of man—texts diametrically opposed to the Syllabus of Errors (esp. 55, 77–80).
3. Substitution of juridical formalism for supernatural vigilance.
– The motu proprio is meticulously legal where earthly procedure is concerned:
– majorities (two-thirds),
– composition of commissions,
– oaths of secrecy,
– order of precedence,
– handling of amendments.
– But it is silent about:
– the duty to reject any proposition contrary to previous magisterium,
– the obligation to preserve unchanged the sense of dogmas (*eodem sensu eademque sententia*, as defined by Vatican I),
– the grave danger of innovators and heretics within.
The omission is doctrinally devastating. St. Pius X explicitly condemned the evolutionary notion of dogma and the subversion of doctrine through “pastoral” vehicles. This motu proprio furnishes exactly that vehicle: dogma is not openly denied; it is procedurally relativized, placed at the disposal of commissions and votes steered by an apostate leadership.
Codified Secrecy and Managed Consensus as Instruments of Revolution
Art. 26–27 impose secrecy:
– Bishops must keep secret the discussions and individual opinions.
– Periti, officials, and all workers swear an oath to faithfully execute their role and keep secrecy about acts, discussions, votes.
On one level, this mirrors earlier practices against political interference. In this context, it becomes a shield for manipulation:
– It prevents the faithful from knowing which “Fathers” resist modernist tendencies.
– It protects the architects who pre-wrote schemata and controlled commissions—the inner circle of the conciliar sect—from public scrutiny.
– It facilitates what actually occurred: the sidelining of the orthodox preparatory schemas (under Pius XII’s theology) and their replacement by heterodox drafts under post-1958 control.
Art. 39 requires two-thirds majorities, but:
– Art. 6 §2 and 9 centralize control: commission presidents and many members are appointed by John XXIII.
– Art. 58–61 ensure that all amendments are filtered through commissions before returning to the assembly, allowing gatekeeping by those same appointees.
– Art. 62 reserves to John XXIII (and, later, his successors in the conciliar line) the final decision as to which approved schemas proceed to solemn promulgation.
This is not the free exercise of the teaching Church under a true pope; it is a stage-managed “synod” where an antipope’s network dictates the agenda, chooses who shapes draft texts, and filters what reaches final vote.
The combination of:
– secret deliberations,
– controlled commissions,
– two-thirds thresholds,
– papally appointed presidents and periti,
turns the council into a political machine: capable of producing texts that appear collegial and “ecumenical,” while systematically neutralizing pre-conciliar orthodoxy.
The “Periti” and “Observers”: Ensuring the Penetration of Modernism
Art. 9–11: “Periti conciliares” are designated by the authority of John XXIII; episcopal “Fathers” can also have private experts.
This guarantees that:
– those with modernist formation, condemned prior to 1958, are introduced into the bloodstream of the council as its intellectual architects,
– while the simple or orthodox bishops depend on periti to navigate texts, thus handing effective doctrinal influence to the enemies of tradition.
Art. 18 formalizes “Observers”:
– Delegates of “Christians separated from the Apostolic See” (heretical and schismatic sects) may attend public sessions and general congregations and inform their communities.
– They lack vote or voice, but their very presence, institutionally honored, proclaims a new ecclesiology:
– Heretics are no longer to be converted but courted.
– The Church adapts her self-understanding under the gaze of separated communities, whose sensitivities become a factor.
This contradicts the perennial doctrine that:
– the Church is the unique ark of salvation,
– false “churches” have no rights as such,
– all dialogue must aim at conversion to the one true faith, not mutual recognition.
It directly prepares the “ecumenical movement” later enshrined in Unitatis Redintegratio and the conciliar sect’s endless “dialogue” with heresy.
The Latin Shell: A Weaponized Continuity Illusion
Art. 28–29 insist on Latin as the language in public sessions, general congregations, tribunal, and acts. On the surface, this appears traditional. In reality:
– The use of Latin provides an aura of continuity to proceedings designed precisely to introduce doctrinal, disciplinary, and liturgical rupture.
– It camouflages the modernist content and method so that naive observers will think: “Surely all is Catholic; everything is in Latin, with mitres and mozzettas.”
This is the classic modernist tactic condemned by St. Pius X: to remain within the structures, maintain appearances, but alter the substance. *Appropinquante Concilio* is a masterpiece of this tactic: a Latin juridical carapace encasing the larvae of the “neo-church.”
From Council of the Church to Parliament of Man
Note several symptomatic distortions encoded in the norms:
1. Transformation of bishops into parliamentarians:
– Structured debates, time limits (Art. 33), allotted speaking slots, amendments, votes “placet / non placet / placet iuxta modum.”
– Dogma becomes a matter of negotiated text and majority approval under political procedure, instead of the organic, faithful expression of the deposit guided by the Holy Ghost in continuity with prior decrees.
2. Reduction of infallibility to manipulated promulgation:
– Art. 49 presents a pseudo-liturgical form by which the “pope” confirms what “pleased” the Fathers. But if the one confirming is an antipope promoting heretical novelties, the result is neither magisterial nor binding. Instead, a revolutionary leadership uses Catholic forms to crown anti-Catholic content.
3. Economic and technical structures:
– Art. 7 §2: Technical and economic secretariats underscore the bureaucratic, managerial conception of the council. This paramasonic style—commissions, secretariats, technicians—mirrors secular and Masonic organizational culture condemned by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
The council is constructed as:
– a planetary assembly,
– technocratically managed,
– sensitive to observers,
– dependent on experts,
– conditioned by secrecy and choreography.
This is the opposite of the robust, supernatural exercise of episcopal and papal authority against the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Contradiction with Pre-1958 Magisterium: Systemic and Inevitable
When we read Appropinquante Concilio in the light of the documents provided (Quas Primas, Syllabus, Lamentabili) and the consistent teaching of the pre-1958 Magisterium, several contradictions and omissions stand out:
– Pius IX’s Syllabus condemns:
– religious indifferentism (15–18),
– separation of Church and state (55),
– the cult of “progress, liberalism, and modern civilization” (80).
– Pius XI in Quas Primas:
– demands public recognition of Christ’s Kingship by rulers and states,
– indicts laicism as the root cause of social ruin,
– orders the faithful to combat this apostasy.
– St. Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi:
– unmasks modernism as the synthesis of all heresies,
– sternly commands its extirpation from seminaries, universities, clergy.
Appropinquante Concilio:
– says nothing of these condemnations,
– does not reaffirm them,
– does not commit the council to defend them,
– instead establishes structures (particularly the “Secretariat for Christian Unity” and communication regimes) that are tailor-made to subvert them.
Thus, the motu proprio is not neutral; it is programmatic. It constitutes a deliberate departure:
– from councils that defend,
– to an assembly that “updates”;
– from anathematizing errors,
– to “dialoguing” with them;
– from Christocentric, theocratic order,
– to anthropocentric, liberal accommodation.
Such a systemic contradiction reveals that the author and the apparatus he commands cannot be the authentic magisterium of the Catholic Church, which, by divine promise, cannot impose upon the faithful structures ordered towards the dissolution of faith and worship.
Silence on Modernism: The Most Damning Confession
The gravest accusation against Appropinquante Concilio is what it does not say.
At the very moment when:
– Modernism, condemned in 1907, had gone underground but metastasized in seminaries, universities, and episcopates.
– Naturalism, existentialism, biblical criticism, liturgical archeologism, democratism, ecumenism, and Masonic influence ravaged Catholic life.
This motu proprio:
– does not mention “Modernism” once;
– does not bind the council to Pascendi, Lamentabili, the Anti-Modernist Oath;
– does not warn against the presence of wolves among the “Fathers” and “periti”;
– does not fortify the bishops in their duty to defend the flock against internal enemies denounced by St. Pius X;
– does not recall the irrevocability of prior definitions and condemnations;
– does not call for the eradication of errors already identified as deadly.
This silence is itself a repudiation of the prior papal mandate. Where a true successor of Pius X would have said: “The council will reaffirm and enforce Pascendi, Lamentabili, Quas Primas, the Syllabus; modernism is to be extirpated,” John XXIII designs a council that functionally brackets all these as embarrassing relics to be quietly superseded.
According to the constant teaching summarized in Lamentabili and Pascendi:
– to silence condemnation is to favor error;
– to favor error in the name of charity and adaptation is the essence of modernism.
Appropinquante Concilio is thereby exposed as the juridical matrix of the conciliar sect’s apostasy: it sets the stage for a counterfeit magisterium to occupy Catholic forms and turn them against Catholic substance.
A Pseudo-Catholic Shell Serving the Conciliar Sect
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, the conclusion is inescapable:
– The motu proprio Appropinquante Concilio is not an innocuous procedural text.
– It is the carefully engineered protocol by which an illegitimate “pope” convenes, controls, and weaponizes a global assembly to:
– neutralize pre-1958 doctrinal condemnations,
– enthrone ecumenism,
– undermine the Social Kingship of Christ,
– democratize doctrine through votes and commissions,
– enthrone “experts” and observers,
– impose a hermeneutic of “pastoral” novelty.
Its meticulous attention to logistics stands in horrifying contrast to its total disregard for the immediate threats previously denounced by true popes: Masonry, socialism, naturalism, liberalism, modernism, false ecumenism. This asymmetry proves that the text serves another master than Christ the King.
A true Council, guided by a true Roman Pontiff faithful to his predecessors, would have:
– reasserted the Syllabus of Errors and Quas Primas,
– renewed the Anti-Modernist Oath,
– condemned new philosophical and theological deviations by name,
– defended the Most Holy Sacrifice and the sacraments,
– strengthened Catholic states and missions in their exclusive allegiance to the one true Church.
Appropinquante Concilio does none of this. Instead, it encodes:
– secretive procedures,
– centralized control by an antipope,
– structural favoring of modernist periti,
– recognition of heretical observers,
– and a political-parliamentary method alien to the divine constitution of the Church.
Thus the document stands as a juridical monument of the conciliar revolution: an apparently pious Latin decretion that, in reality, strips the council of its Catholic function and hands it over to the architects of the neo-church, the “abomination of desolation” installed within the holy places.
Source:
Appropinquante concilio (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025